New World/New Mind

by Paul R. Ehrlich and Robert Ornstein

Book Overview

There is no longer sufficient time to rely on the normal pace of cultural evolution to deal with today's dilemmas... Human beings have always been the most adaptable creatures on the planet, and they... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385239408
• ISBN13: 9780385239400
• Release Date: December 1988
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Length: 302 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

an important book

This book is nearly twenty years old and is still entirely relevant, which is probably a good part of the reason it's still in print. Mr. Ornstein and Mr. Ehrlich make the basic point that the human brain is not suited for detecting many of the gradually escalating or insidious dangers, such as overpopulation and climate change, that threaten our very existence as a species. Not only do they elaborate upon this point in a highly readable fashion, but also put forth ways that we can minimize the problem, such as through educating children differently. This book should be required reading in our schools. Author of Adjust Your Brain: A Practical Theory for Maximizing Mental Health.

An important point

This is a great book, and still relevant. It suggests that evolution has been running at different speeds in the different areas of human biology, culture and science, and uses this distinction to try and understand why mankind is so very bad at dealing with long-term threats like global warming. The proof of Ornstein's central idea is in the increasing cartoonisation of the world that has continued in the media since the book was published. We are essentially still monkeys. argue the authors, monkeys with clever toys, and we still respond to threats like bangs and baby-snatchings in exactly the same way that we used to when we lived in caves, and the modern media and its masters know this. If anything the so-called 'War on Terror' proves the authors point 15 years after the book was written.

From 1989, Not Updated, Superb Never-the-Less

EDIT 20 Dec 07 to add links. This superb book was published in 1989 and is being reissued, and I am very glad it has come out again. I bought it because it was recommended by Tom Atlee, seer of the Co-Intelligence Institute, and I found it very worthwhile. As I reflect on the book, I appreciate two key points from the book: 1) The evolution of our brains and our ability to sense cataclysmic change that takes place over long periods of time is simply not going fast enough--the only thing that can make a difference is accelerated cultural evolution, which I find quite fascinating, because cultural evolution as the authors describe it harkens to noosphere, World Brain, co-intelligence, and what the Swedes are calling M4 IS: multinational, multiagency, multidisciplinary, multidomain information sharing--what I think of as Open Source Intelligence--personal, public, & political. 2) One of the more compelling points the authors make is that not only are politicians being elected and rewarded on the basis of short-term decisions that are by many measures intellectually, morally, and financially corrupt, but the so-called knowledge workers--the scientists, engineers, and others who should be "blowing the whistle," are so specialized that there is a real lack of integrative knowledge. I realized toward the end of the book, page 248 exactly, that Knowledge Integration & Information Sharing must become the new norm. This is a tremendous book that is loaded with gems of insight. I have it heavily marked up. Although it integrates and reminds me of ideas ably explored in other books, such as Health of Nations, Cultural Creatives, Clock of the Long Now, ATTENTION, Limits to Growth, and Forbidden Knowledge, these two authors have integrated their "brief" in a very readable way--as one person says on the book jacket, they effectively weave together many strands of knowledge. The annotated bibliography is quite good, and causes me to be disappointed that the publishers did not provide for the updating of the bibliography--the ideas being blended are timeless and need no update. Two notes toward the end were quite interesting. They speculate that Japan may be the first modern nation to collapse, if it is subject to disruption of the global trade and transportation system. They also have high praise for Global 2000, an integrative work whose predictions for the 2000 period (written in the 1970's, I believe) are turning out to be quite accurate. Finally, woven throughout the book, is the simple fact that we are now burning up our savings--consuming the Earth at a much faster rate than it can replenish itself. We are very much out of harmony with our sustaining environment, and at grave risk of self-destruction. Interestingly, they remind of the Durants last word in "The Lessons of History:" that the only revolution, the only sustainable revolution, is that which takes place in the human mind. As these authors would have it, if we do not devel